When Butterflies Are Born

[Be****]

Beauty made time hold its breath when she stepped into the morning. Her hair—long, endless, impossibly brown—spilled like a waterfall in slow motion, silk woven with dusk and honey. It shimmered with quiet secrets: the burnished gold of caramel, the depth of roasted coffee, the cool gleam of moonlight caught in strands. It moved when she did, catching the breeze like a whispered spell.

Her eyes—those deep, dark pools—were the color of rain-drenched bark and late-autumn earth. They looked as though they had lived through centuries of forests and remembered every leaf. When she looked at you, it felt like something inside you paused, knelt, and listened.

Each morning, she ***ted barefoot in her garden, where sunlight braided itself through the curls of her hair, and the scent of jasmine unfolded in the air like a promise. There was something in the way she moved—the unselfconscious grace, the quiet attentiveness to color, to light—that made the world lean in. Butterflies did more than visit; they came as if summoned. Drawn by something older than instinct. They circled her in slow spirals, delicate and reverent, as though they were remembering a goddess from another life. Some landed on her fingers, others on her shoulder or in her hair, resting not like guests, but like pilgrims who had finally arrived.

He noticed.

Not with hunger, but with wonder.

Her future—though neither of them knew it yet—was a man who did not chase, only moved with the ease of someone who had nothing to prove and everything to offer. He passed her gate most mornings, not to intrude, but because something about her presence called him quietly, like warm light calls cold hands.

“If I were a brush,” he said one morning, pausing by her gate, “I’d beg to be held by your hand.”

She turned, amusement tugging at her lips, but her eyes held something slower, more curious. “Careful,” she said, voice like water over stones. “Words like that might end up ***ted into something permanent.”

He smiled—not coy, but certain. “That’s the hope.”

He never brought gifts. He brought himself. Conversation. Stillness. The kind of attention that felt like the world falling away. He listened as though she was a favorite story he’d been waiting to hear aloud. His words were chosen like brushstrokes—intentional, soft in some places, bold in others, always watching how they landed.

One warm afternoon, they sat beneath a flowering trellis, its petals breathing scent into the air like a soft exhale. She had ***t on her fingers, a smudge of ochre at her wrist. Her hair was pinned loosely, strands slipping free in lazy waves. The butterflies returned—unhurried, assured—floating toward her as if gravity meant nothing.

One settled on her shoulder. Another on the arch of her hand.

He watched, entranced. “Even nature,” he said softly, “can’t help but fall in love with you.”

She turned to him, the corner of her mouth lifting in that way she did when something touched her deeper than she wanted to admit. “Then nature has good taste.”

He didn’t reach for her. He didn’t have to. The space between them was already humming with something wordless, tender, undeniable.

And the butterflies remained—unseen this time, but just as real—fluttering softly.